Happy web with Sandvox

Karelia Software has released its simple to use website building application, Sandvox.

"Since we previewed Sandvox last year, we've been overwhelmed with the demand that the Mac community has demonstrated for an easy, Mac-like way of building and publishing websites," said Dan Wood, co-creator with Terrence Talbot of Sandvox. "I think Mac users will be pleased with our solution for easily building websites, weblogs, and online photo albums."

Sandvox features drag-and-drop website assembly, live editing without a preview mode, two dozen designs, and over a dozen Pagelets, small areas of content that reside within a web page's sidebar.

Any collection of pages can be organised as a blog, with automatic RSS generation. iLife integration also features. Media, including MP3s and QuickTime movies, is automatically rendered as iTunes-compatible podcasts; images are automatically made compatible with iPhoto's photocasting feature.

Sandvox also offers a setup assistant to help upload sites, using FTP, SFTP, and WebDAV, and also including .Mac.

The Pro version allows for the creation of raw HTML content as pages or pagelets allowing advanced users to integrate additional elements and support server-side scripting.

Karelia has also released a Software Developer's Kit (SDK) for Cocoa developers to build their own page components and a Designer's Kit that lets CSS-savvy web developers create their own page designs.

Built for Mac OS X 10.4, Sandvox 1.0 is a Universal binary for PowerPC and Intel Macs. The application is available to buy online directly from the company in 'regular' ($39) and 'pro' ($69) versions.